


An Unexpected Epilogue

by edenbound



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Genderfluid Crowley (Good Omens), Other, non-binary Crowley
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-18
Updated: 2019-12-18
Packaged: 2021-02-26 09:41:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21847615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/edenbound/pseuds/edenbound
Summary: Some years after Armageddon doesn't happen, a sulky and rather familiar young man shows up in Aziraphale's shop.
Relationships: Aziraphale & Crowley & Warlock Dowling, Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 30
Kudos: 328





	An Unexpected Epilogue

**Author's Note:**

> Crowley is a non-specified flavour of fuck-the-gender-binary in this fic. There's no angst about that per se, though Warlock isn't aware of it (and that gives Aziraphale some concerns).

"Where is she?" a petulant, half-familiar voice demands, from somewhere behind Aziraphale. He frowns, carefully replacing the book he's holding on the shelf and giving it a fond pat (there, there, you didn't think I'd _really_ let someone buy you?) before he turns to face the speaker, who looks entirely incongruous in the dusty, cosy, old-fashioned confines of the shop -- baggy jeans, hands in pockets, hair flopping across his forehead, hoodie..

"Warlock?" he asks, after a moment.

"Where _is_ she?" 

"I'm sorry, I don't know who..."

"You do!" Warlock looks up fully, meeting Aziraphale's eyes with anger that makes him almost want to step back. "And if it was you that made Nanny have to go away, I'll -- I'll -- "

For a seventeen year old boy, Aziraphale knows, the threatening tears are a complete humiliation. He turns his back to Warlock, taking up another book to carefully re-shelve, to ensure that he can't see the trembling lower lip, the hot eyes. "You're looking for Mrs Ashtoreth?"

"Yes, and I _know_ she used to come here. And I know you're the gardener so don't play dumb, _Brother Francis_. And," a sniff, ostensibly of disdain but more likely a slightly runny nose, "she's not a Mrs."

Aziraphale sighs for the days when he thought he and Crowley had done such a good job, been so subtle. It had been nice to have _some_ illusions. "It wasn't me that made her have to leave," he says. "She had superiors. And she's... Well, if you stay in the shop for about half an hour more, at the most, she'll be here. But she might -- well, you might get a bit of a shock. I don't think Nanny Ashtoreth was the person you thought, really, any more than I was."

"I know _that_ ," Warlock says, voice dripping with scorn. "Do you think I care? She's the only person who ever really cared about me, and _that_ wasn't a lie. And I want to see her."

Aziraphale thinks for a moment of that household, the feeling that despite all the money and all the care lavished on getting things right that somehow Warlock was mostly an accessory. That the Dowlings were a story they were telling themselves, which needed a perfect little boy, a boy who would at first be tolerated and encouraged in everything he wanted to do -- but a boy who must continue to fit a particular mould, and if he did not... 

"Of course," he says, gently. "Why don't you sit down? Would you, ah... would you care for a cup of cocoa?"

* * *

He is honestly rather nervous about what will happen once Crowley comes through the door into the shop. He's already been round once today, for lunch, and will return to pick Aziraphale up to go for dinner -- they're always flying more or less wingtip-to-wingtip these days (or joined at the hip, as Aziraphale reminds himself to say around humans), and Aziraphale always looks forward to seeing him whenever they have (however briefly) been apart. But he wonders what Warlock will make of his Nanny now: Crowley's hair has changed again in the time since Armageddon didn't happen, into something newfangled and modern as always ("It's an undercut, angel!"), and his clothes tend to read as masculine.

He doesn't have time to work up a proper head of worry, though, because Crowley is early -- comes in with a bag of pastries from the shop and a kiss for Aziraphale's cheek before anything can be said, any warning can be uttered. "Got these for you, angel," he says, off-handed like it isn't an enormous capitalised I LOVE YOU every time he does these things. "Bakery's closing up shop early for some reason, and they had these left."

"Thank you, dearest," Aziraphale murmurs, taking them and kissing Crowley's cheek in return; he would be less reserved, perhaps, if they didn't have an audience, would draw Crowley into an embrace and -- well, that train of thought won't do right now. He does take the moment to inhale the warm scent of Crowley's skin, a smell that has always reminded him somehow of marzipan. Or cyanide, as Crowley would probably point out, squirming away from anything that sounds like being nice. "You have a visitor," he says, to cut off that train of thought, and Crowley blinks, swinging round to scan the shop.

"A -- _Warlock_?" 

"Nanny?"

Aziraphale is not sure which of them moves first, but the outcome would be the same either way -- a fierce hug, Warlock almost as tall as Crowley, but pressing his forehead to Crowley's shoulder all the same. Crowley has a hand on the back of his head, is murmuring something to him. Aziraphale turns away to find some plates and set out an assortment of pastries, and to put the kettle on for Crowley's coffee. Still, he can't help but hear them.

"They wouldn't let me look for you before."

"I'm shocked you found me at all," Crowley says. "But you always were a clever boy."

"I missed you," Warlock says, barely audible at all. "You were the only one who..."

"I'm sorry I had to leave, but your parents wouldn't have let me stay around much longer anyway." There's a rustle of fabric as the two pull apart, Warlock probably flustered with embarrassment. "I've been worrying about you," Crowley says, quietly.

A sniff. "I've left home," Warlock says, in a tone mutinous and stubborn that Aziraphale remembers Nanny Ashtoreth being able to quell with one look, one quirk of her lipsticked mouth.

But: "Good," Crowley says. "You can stay with me. S'long as you don't mind living with me and my husband, anyway."

There's a brief stunned silence, and Aziraphale turns with the mug of coffee for Crowley in time to see Warlock staring at him in consternation, eyes dropping to the wedding band on his left hand, darting away to the identical ring Crowley's wearing. "I'm really not as old and fussy as you think," he says, exasperatedly.

Crowley snorts softly. "No, you're worse. But you won't mind, right, Warlock?"

"Not if I get to stay with you," the boy says, tentatively. "But..."

"For my part, you're very welcome," Aziraphale says, pushing a plate into Warlock's hand. "And we can take care of everything." It's not the quiet retirement he had pictured for them, an unexpected epilogue to the events of Armageddon. But he remains an angel, and he can sense the love between Crowley and Warlock, a bond that hasn't been broken through the intervening years -- and he remembers the Dowlings' household, where Crowley's love was the only warm thing sometimes, despite the fact that there was no lack of anything material that a boy could possibly want.

That should have told him something, back then, about where his loyalties should lie. But he's wiser now, or at least less foolish.

"So that's settled?" he asks. Warlock is looking between them, still processing.

"So... you won't mind that I'm gay," he says, tentatively. "Or that I don't want to go to university." A pause. "Or that I don't want to grind the Earth under my heel." 

"No, dear," Crowley says, in a voice that sounds mostly like Nanny Ashtoreth's, and with a hand firmly on Warlock's shoulder. "Of course not."

**Author's Note:**

> I have two feelings about Crowley and Warlock: 
> 
> 1) We see Crowley encouraging Warlock to think evil thoughts, but it comes from a place where Warlock is to love and trust his Nanny and do what she says -- there's no abuse or fear in that relationship. The surest way to earn anyone's loyalty and make them do what you want is for them to love you, and it is easiest to love someone who loves you in return. It is really easy to catch someone out when they're pretending to care. Ergo, I think Crowley genuinely cares for Warlock, and Warlock for him.
> 
> 2) I had a nanny in childhood. I'm 30 years old, haven't seen her in 15 years or more, but I would still run across a room to throw myself into her arms if I could only find her first. And I don't even like being touched. At Christmas, write the wish fulfilment fic you wish to see, I guess.


End file.
